Stem families and joint families in comparative historical perspective

This note revisits the author's June 2009 PDR article, "Reconsidering the Northwest European family system." Using an array of contemporary and historical census microdata from around the world with simple controls for agricultural employment and demographic structure, I detected no significant differences in complex family structure between nineteenth-century Western Europe and North America and twentieth-century developing countries. This article adds two new measures designed to detect stem families and joint families. The results suggest that Western Europeans and North Americans have had a long-standing aversion to joint family living arrangements, and that this pattern cannot be easily ascribed to demographic and economic conditions.